Dorothy Rowe - What Should I Believe?: Why Our Beliefs about the Nature of Death and the Purpose of Life Dominate Our Lives

What Should I Believe?

Suddenly, in the twenty-first century, religion has become a political power. It affects us all, whether were religious or not. We want to make up our own minds about what we believe, but its difficult to do this. Everyone has to face the dilemma that we all die but no one knows for certain what death actually is. All religions promise to overcome death, but theres no set of religious or philosophical beliefs that ensures that our life is always happy and secure. Moreover, for many of us, what we were taught about a religion severely diminished our self-confidence and left us with a constant debilitating feeling of guilt and shame.

Through all this turmoil comes the calm, clear voice of eminent psychologist Dorothy Rowe. She separates the political from the personal, the power-seeking from the compassionate. She shows how, if we use our beliefs as a defence against our feelings of worthlessness, we feel compelled to force our beliefs on to other people by coercion or aggression. However, it is possible to create a set of beliefs, expressed in the religious or philosophical metaphors most meaningful to us, that allows us to live at peace with ourselves and other people, and to face life with courage and optimism.

Dorothy Rowe is a psychologist and author of thirteen books, including the worldwide bestseller Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison . She is Australian and divides her time between London and Sydney.

An important and moving account of our beliefs in life and death

Lewis Wolpert FRS, Emeritus Professor, Cell and Developmental Biology, University College, London

Dorothy Rowe uses her exceptional gifts of wisdom, common sense and clarity of thought to explain the nature of religious belief and to show us, as only she can, how to confront the problem of death.

Carmen Callil

Dorothy Rowe casts a bracingly cool eye on the fantasies which can inform religious belief. An important and robust attack on the self-serving aspects of religion.

Gwyneth Lewis

Too often those who write about religion seek to convert, inflame, or condemn. At a time when belief in God has never been more controversial and debated, the sane, balanced and wise voice of Dorothy Rowe comes as manna from heaven.

Peter Stanford, Catholic writer, broadcaster and biographer

I am a great devotee of Dorothys writing but I dont think its appropriate for me to offer a quote for this particular book, since I am declared Christian and happy

Fay Weldon

Dorothys book focuses minds, like mine, who do not allow themselves time to think things through

Terry Mullins, Chairman of the North London Humanist Group

Dorothy Rowe brings a refreshingly sane voice to the fraught, confusing but vital discussion of our beliefs about life, death and reality. Looking past the content of beliefs, she asks why people believe as they do and describes with wonderful lucidity how deep-seated emotions shape our ideas about life and these, in turn, mold our experience of it. This book is a timely reminder that we choose what we believe and how we believe it, and a passionate, liberating argument for self-awareness.

Vishvapani, Buddhist writer and broadcaster

What Should I Believe?

Why Our Beliefs about the Nature of Death and the Purpose of Life Dominate Our Lives

Dorothy Rowe

Previous editions published by Fontana (1989) and Harper Collins (1991) as The Construction of Life and Death (also known as The Courage to Live )

First published in Great Britain by John Wiley & Sons 1982

This edition first published 2009 by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

Copyright 1982, 1989, 2009 Dorothy Rowe

The right of Dorothy Rowe to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

This publication has been produced with paper manufactured to strict environmental standards and with pulp derived from sustainable forests.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rowe, Dorothy.
[Construction of life and death]
What should I believe? : why our beliefs about the nature of death and the purpose of life dominate our lives / Dorothy Rowe.
p. cm.
Originally published: . Construction of life and death. Chichester [Eng.]; New York : John Wiley, c1982.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Personal construct theory. 2. Psychology, Religious. 3. DeathPsychological aspects. 4. Life. I. Title.
BF698.9.P47R69 2009
150.1dc22

2008019672

ISBN: 978-0-415-46679-0

Wherever it is happening, the revival of religion is mixed up with political conflicts, including an intensifying struggle over the Earths shrinking reserves of natural resources; but there can be no doubt that religion is once again a power in its own right.

John Gray

The aims of life are the best defence against death: and not only in the Lager.

Primo Levi

As mens habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another only to scoff, I conclude that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely with his whole heart, while nothing would be publicly honoured save justice and charity.

Baruch Spinoza

CONTENTS

Preface

We live in a crazy world. Over the past few years, thousands of people have been killed, or injured, or driven from their homes by other people who believe that they are entitled to kill those who do not share their religious beliefs. At the same time, a president of the most powerful country in the world, while following policies which have fostered these tragedies, believed that the end of the world would soon be upon us, whereupon he and those who share his beliefs would be raptured into heaven, leaving behind the chaos he helped to create. Millions like him believe that the turmoil in the Middle East and the perilous changes in the worlds climate are no more than evidence of the working out of Gods plan, and that nothing should be done that would impede His plan.

In the last two years a number of militant atheists have ridden to the rescue or so they thought. They certainly stirred up controversy. Religion is being talked and argued about in a way I have not seen before in my lifetime (b. 1930). In his book The God Delusion and in his television programmes which followed, Richard Dawkins asked in great amazement, How can people be so stupid as to believe this nonsense? Christopher Hitchens was hurt and angry. How, he asked in his book God Is Not Great , can people have beliefs which lead them to be unforgivably cruel? John Humphrys does not see himself as a militant atheist but as a curious, persistent questioner; as he ended his book In God We Doubt , where he interviewed three religious leaders, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Professor Tariq Ramadan and Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, he could only ask himself, How can these intelligent, educated men believe such things?